New releases from Carol Liebowitz/Bill Payne and from Big Heart Machine offer inventive and innovative music in your choice of sizes: duo or 18-piece big band. Continue reading
Tag Archives: bill payne
Four Masters of Improvisation: Crothers and Payne, Mann and Krachy
Connie Crothers and Bill Payne. Photo by Scott Friedlander.
Woody Mann and Charley Kratchy. Photo by Rod Franklin.
The late pianist Connie Crothers, who lives on the same trunk of the jazz tree as pianist Lennie Tristano, with whom she studied, has been the center of gravity for a number of impressive musicians who have flourished under her watch. Among those Crothers colleagues are clarinetist Bill Payne and saxophonist Charley Krachy, who appear on three albums reviewed here. Each of the albums features what drummer Carol Tristano, Lennie’s daughter, thought might well be described as organic improvisation. You might also call it spontaneous improvisation (but not free). The first two recordings are The Stone Set/Conversations, a double album that pairs Payne with Crothers. Released in 2011, it is still as fresh now as then. The second is Conversations, a brand-new release that pairs Krachy with renowned blues/jazz/Americana guitarist Woody Mann, who himself studied with Tristano. The albums couldn’t be more different, but the two duos share one thing: they live as comfortably and joyously in musical improvisation as dolphins do in the sea. Continue reading
The Interlace Concerts, Part 3: Bill Payne and Carol Liebowitz’s ‘Movie Music’
Carol Liebowitz and Bill Payne. Photo by Cheryl Richards. Courtesy of Carol Liebowitz.
Clarinetist Bill Payne and pianist Carol Liebowitz found their way to pianist Connie Crothers along completely different but equally serendipitous paths, which crossed, metaphorically at least, in Crothers’ studio. Their album Payne Lindal Liebowitz (New Artists Records, 2015), on which they are joined by violinist Eva Lindal, testifies to their preternaturally acute ears and their remarkable ability to collaborate on spontaneous compositions whose expressiveness and coherence equal that of any written work. Continue reading
Interlace I and II: Prelude
Top: Kazzrie Jaxen and Virg Dzurinko; middle: Carol Liebowitz; bottom: Bill Payne and Mark Weber.
This is the first of four posts on two upcoming concerts—Interlace I and II—taking place at the Outpost and featuring the Kazzrie Jaxen Quartet (pianist Jaxen, saxophonist Charley Krachy, bassist Don Messina, and drummer Bill Chattin), pianist Virg Dzurinko, pianist Carol Liebowitz, clarinetist Bill Payne, and poet Mark Weber.
All of the musicians come out of the Lennie Tristano school, having studied with Tristano and/or his students, as did Weber. He’s the driving force behind these concerts. He’s been working for years to get all these folks together in Albuquerque, and he and his wife, Janet Simon, are sponsoring the events. Continue reading